By IANS
Kathmandu : Nearly four weeks after he was marched off at gunpoint by masked abductors and went missing despite a manhunt by security forces, there are growing fears that Nepal’s TV journalist Birendra Shah has been killed by Maoists.
Shah, a journalist with private television station Avenues, had reported about the involvement of Nepal’s Maoist guerrillas in timber-smuggling, following which he was abducted in broad daylight in Bara district in south Nepal 26 days ago.
Since then, there has been no news of him despite hunts by security forces and repeated appeals by journalists, rights groups and his frantic family for his release.
Shah’s disappearance created a furore with MPs from the ruling parties interrupting a special session of parliament called to decide King Gyanendra’s fate. Instead, they demanded that the Maoists take immediate steps to free Shah, who is being called Nepal’s ‘Daniel Pearl’ after the Wall Street Journal journalist who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in 2002.
The furore made Speaker Subhash Nembang appoint a team of MPs who went to Bara to investigate the kidnapping.
The team has named four Maoists, including chief of the Bara “people’s government”, as being behind the abduction, an allegation corroborated by locals and journalists’ groups.
However, the rebels are denying any hand in the incident, saying that the allegations are a conspiracy to malign them.
This week, the guerrillas said they were forming their own team to investigate the abduction, a move dismissed by journalists as being a ploy to bury the issue.
Ironically, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has tacitly admitted in public that the Maoists were behind Shah’s disappearance, but the government has failed to take any action against any rebel leader.
Journalists with contacts in the Maoist party say that Shah was killed within 24 hours of his abduction and his body is likely to have been buried in a forest.
Due to snowballing public and media indignation, the rebels are now denying any involvement.
On Monday, Shah’s wife Umrawati and two young sons came to the capital to plead for his release.
A sobbing Umrawati said the family was receiving threats to let things lie and was living in dire fear.
Journalists Tuesday led a protest march in the capital demanding Shah’s release and punishment for the perpetrators.
Despite their denial, the Shah incident is going to affect the Maoist image in the local media. During the 10-year Maoist insurgency, when the guerrillas were hunted down by security forces, the same media had highlighted cases of human rights abuse by the state and helped save guerrilla lives.
Bishnu Nishthuri, president of the powerful Federation of Nepalese Journalists that played a prominent role in the pro-democracy movement during King Gyanendra’s absolute rule, says the Maoists have committed “political treachery”.
The media, Nishthuri warned, would have to rethink whether the Maoists can still be regarded as a political party when their cadres were indulging in terrorist activities.